Are LLMs displacing labour? In the aggregate - not from what one can see. The aggregate statistics tell a different story e.g. the hiring of software engineers is still growing Y-o-Y.
The limits of LLMs will be put in place through financial constraints. People like you seem to think there's an infinite stream of money to fund this stuff. Not really. Its the same reason why Anthropic and OAI are now shifting focus to generate revenues and cash flows because they will not receive external funding forever.
I can’t speak for the states, but in AU I clearly see a massive displacement of undergrad and junior roles (only in AI exposed domains).
I say this as both someone who works with many execs, hearing their musings, and someone who no longer can justify hiring junior roles themselves.
Irrespective of that; if we take this strategy of only taking action once it is visible to the layman - our scope of actions available will be invariably and significantly diminished.
Even if you are not convinced it is guaranteed and do not believe what myself and others see. I would ask you is your probability of it happening now really that close to 0? If not then would it not be prudent to take the risk seriously?
Politics - proper guardrails, adapting the legal framework to accommodate AI and make sure it doesn't benefit only preselected few.
Something that can and should be done yesterday is to stop the capital drain out of the economy and into accelerated, war-motivated AI development - there's no need for war-AI per se but clearly it's the most likely reason for the capital drain and rush.
Once the rush and wars stop, and some capital is made available for the rest of the economy, the latter can adapt to the introduction of AI at a normal pace, that should include legislative safeguards to support competition and prevent monopolization of AI and information sources.
I think this is complete madness. Im not someone that is in a job so I have the luxury to think critically about what is going on and... I just dont see it.
What I see is that LLMs will complement Labour and the excess returns of model producers will be very minimal (if at all any) due to the intense competition - keeping switching costs to a minimum (close to zero). This is before mentioning open source models which I expect to continue to improve.
There is no specialisation re. models at this moment in time so it is very likely to be the case.
OAI and Anthropic have to generate enough after-tax cash flows from operations to cover their reinvestment needs to continue going on. If they can't cover reinvestment then they will obviously lose as their offering will not be competitive.
There's no certainty they generate this amount of cash profits either. They still have a high chance of going bust, of course that gets lower - IF - they can keep ramping up revenues.
No. I assure you. The cost of retaining labor + AI access to augment them further is far less desirable than downsize, then augment cheaper laborers to bring the quality approximately up to the old headcount. This is exec math, and execs get paid on how much value goes to shareholders, not to keep people employed.
I've reread your post a few times and I can't make heads or tails of it. I don't even disagree with anything you've said, it just seems like a total non-sequitur; nothing you've said gives any reason to disbelieve that AI will put (many) people out of work.
If you can't explain your idea, I doubt it possesses any merit. A commoditization of AI as you're describing does not in any way rule out mass unemployment.
I think what you’re describing is a more general race to the bottom where everyone loses, including the AI companies.
This won’t happen because the AI companies will collude to prevent it from happening, meaning they’ll drop out of that race leaving the rest of us to claim victory.
No Im not describing a race to the bottom. Im saying that its in Google's best interest to ensure Anthropic and OAI do not continue to operate as a going concern and generate enough cash flows to finance reinvestment - by providing a very competitive offering.
Price of tokens is one competitive-instrument for them to achieve that but not the only one - they offer a whole lot more to enterprises that OAI and Anthropic don't.
By doing so Anthropic and OAI's valuations go crashing into the ground along with future prospects of raising funding externally.
Yes. They won't become genuinely important themselves, but they will still upset the balance between workers and capital owners, creating a more extreme situation that we have now.
Lets look at the facts.
Are LLMs displacing labour? In the aggregate - not from what one can see. The aggregate statistics tell a different story e.g. the hiring of software engineers is still growing Y-o-Y.
The limits of LLMs will be put in place through financial constraints. People like you seem to think there's an infinite stream of money to fund this stuff. Not really. Its the same reason why Anthropic and OAI are now shifting focus to generate revenues and cash flows because they will not receive external funding forever.